


dandelion flour and a sprig of leopard's bane

by Fiction_Over_Fact



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: AU: Caleb never joined the M9, Gen, M/M, post-canon AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2020-02-26 15:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18719755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiction_Over_Fact/pseuds/Fiction_Over_Fact
Summary: Despite his allergy, Fjord has never had a real problem with cats. The fluffy ginger tabby that’s taken to breaking into his kitchen is a recent stunning exception.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First CR fic! ~~im not nervous what are you talking about~~  
>  Initially inspired by [THIS](https://fiction-over-facts.tumblr.com/post/184655133882/xanthera-browntiger15-siniristiriita) tumblr post, but then I typed out 1k+ words of backstory notes before I even started the fic and now... I'm not even sure how relevant that's gonna end up being?  
> (Also, because of the AU changes as mentioned in the tags: **The Nein are actually the Nine in this verse**. I'm not just spelling Nein wrong, I promise!)
> 
> (Also also, it's worth noting that, while this fic is an AU and its backstory diverges from the canon storyline at episode 48/49, I'm very likely to refer to (information learned/events that happened) in episodes past that, either by referencing it in the actual fic or just mentioning it in chapter notes. If you want to stay completely unspoiled this is NOT the fic for you.)

In general, Fjord doesn’t talk to Beau much about her work.

It’s partially because asking Beau those types of personal questions—even after three years of travel, distressingly emotional conversations and dragon slaying together—was never well received if it came from anybody but Jester. Admittedly, a little of it is that Fjord isn’t precisely _interested_ in hearing about the new branch of the Cobalt Soul setting up in Nicodranas, or whatever...book stuff she does over at Tidepeak.

That was always more of Nott-and-Beau thing, books.

He listens when she wants to talk but he figures that the nice thing about being a mostly retired adventurer is that, most days, he doesn’t strictly need to _actively_ worry about politics. If Yussah goes mad and they need to get the others into town so they can kill him, Beau will tell him. In the meanwhile, it’s nice to relax.

Right now, relaxed is not quite the right word for what he’s feeling. He knows it’s too late, even before he opens his mouth.

Still, he has to _try_.

“Jester, do _not_ put that—”

Jester, of course, is already pouring the large bowl of sugar into the bread dough she was supposed to be making. She blinks down into the bowl and then looks up at him with large eyes that don’t look as guilty as they should, like she’s not sure how that sugar got into that bowl because it _certainly_ wasn’t her.

“Sorry Fjord!” He gives her a look. Jester takes sugar very seriously, so he has a hard time believing that. “I didn’t mean to!” She continues and that, coupled with the way she’s grinning—mischievous, which is an alarmingly familiar expression on Jester—more than confirms the lie.

“We have to actually bake _something_ , you know.” Fjord cautions, eyeing the last few empty racks in the kitchen. All the others are full already, piled with soft, melty cookies, crumbly muffins and fresh loaves of bread, some smooth and golden, others dark and studded with nuts. The sight makes him very, very thankful for the enchantments on the bakery displays that keep their goods fresh and warm and, more importantly, let him sleep in a few hours every morning.

“Maybe it’ll taste better?” Jester offers, head tilting oh-so-innocently to the side in a way that even _Fjord_ could see through.

“It just keeps the yeast from rising.” He’s told her that dozens of times since opening the bakery. She’d either taken a few too many hits to the head over the years or she was fucking with him. (Oh, she was fucking with him, there was no question about it.) “It’ll be too tough, that bread might as well be a brick.” Jester smiles, completely unashamed.

“I’m tough, I could eat—” She begins to volunteer before she snaps her mouth shut with a click so sharp that Fjord almost winces at the sound. When he sees the way her eyes have lit up he does actually wince. Jester’s _I have an idea face_ rarely means anything good, especially when contained indoors.

“Fjord! Fjord! _What if_ we make more bread-bricks and we build Nugget a little house with them?” She clasps her hands together and looks up at him with big eyes, like she’s an eight-year-old begging for a pony and not a seasoned cleric that he’s seen knock the head clear off a gargoyle. “A little sugary house, just for Nugget!”

“Hold on Jes—”

Jester’s pinwheeling tail knocks another loaf pan to the floor behind her. It lands with a heavy, wet thud and a metallic clatter that Fjord feels deep in his soul.

“...Oops?” Her smile wilts around the edges.

Fjord sighs, more fond than annoyed. “Jes, go and get the brush?” The question visibly jolts her out of her slump and she pops up, immediately bounding out of the room, a blur of energy and color.

“Okay!”

Fjord looks at the batter splattered across the floor, slipping into the cracks between the stones. At least she hadn’t spilled the pot the jumbles were boiling in. That wouldn’t have been pretty.

 

 

The bakery, like most things he’d ended up doing with his life, hadn’t been Fjord’s idea.

When the group had first separated—No- _Veth_ to be with her husband and son, Caduceus back to his family, and Yasha off to follow a storm front—Fjord had hung around a few extra weeks in Nicodranas, just because Beau (and Jester) had asked him to.

Long enough to help Beau secretly pick out the house (“big,” she’d said when they’d started looking, “lots of extra space because you fucks are gonna be in and out of our place _all the time_.”) and Jester secretly plan the proposal (“it can’t be fancy because Beau doesn’t like fancy but it needs to be special, because _she’s_ special,” and Fjord might have cried a little, but at least No- _Veth_ wasn’t there to make fun of him for it.)

He’d stuck around and made sure that his friends were happy and then, once they were both done teasing and punching him for conspiring behind their backs (and he’d promised to make it to the wedding), he’d set off.

* * *

( **A** **secret, never shared** :

Fjord hadn’t wanted to leave.

The Nine were his home, his _family_. He wasn't like the others, he didn't have somewhere to return to with people waiting for him or some divine calling driving him forward. 

But there was nothing for him in the Blooming Grove but Caduceus, and No- _Veth_ was only just getting her family back together. He couldn’t follow Yasha back and forth across the continent, just as he couldn’t take an open invitation to visit as permission to move in with his newly engaged friends.

So.

He left.)

* * *

Fjord wandered the Menagerie Coast for most of a month after leaving Nicodranas, eventually ending up back in Port Damali for lack of a better place to go. It was...odd to be back, especially at first.

In all the time the Nine had traveled together and with all the places they had gone, they’d never _really_ been to Port Damali. They stopped briefly in the docks a few times, but they’d always been urgently on their way somewhere else, with no spare time to wander off or look around.

The city was filled with half-remembered streets and stores, crowds speckled with faces he almost recognized, all just familiar enough to be eerie.

Fjord had never been too attached to the city itself—but he’d loved the sea, the food stall with the spiced meat pies and the dockmaster's big, floppy-eared dog (dead, he knows without asking or checking. Big, floppy-eared dogs didn’t live nearly as long as they deserved to).

There hadn’t, as far as he was considered, been any good changes to Port Damali, though the worst change for Fjord personally was that he was _alone_.

No Nott lurking around his elbows, no Caduceus looming over his shoulder, no Beau grumbling at his side. He’d seldom been really, truly alone at any point in the last several years, and even then it was always with a deadline, always some ‘ _meet up with the group once I’m done in this shop’_ or ‘ _head around back to investigate then talk with Beau’_ or _‘sit tight and wait for Nott to sneak in and pick the lock_.’

But he was alone and that wasn’t going to change, so he rented out a room and set about trying to find something to do with himself.

Fjord was many things—well traveled, silver-tongued and clever enough (though a bit lacking in common sense, according to Beau and many of his scars).

He was also, undeniably, a half-orc.

That had always been one of the Nine’s problems.

Tieflings and half-orcs weren’t too popular in most parts and if anyone realized Nott was a goblin they often had to skip town regardless of any business or coin they might have had on them. Caduceus was more a curiosity than a problem in most places though, and Yasha could pass for a human well enough. Still, an oddly colored fuzzy man and a socially...problematic human and human look-a-like usually weren’t quite charming enough to tip them onto the positive side of the scale.

Fjord had often solved that issue by disguising himself whenever they had important things to attend to—dark-skinned men with eyes like amber stones, old ones with work-worn hands and sun-drenched skin, a thousand faces for a thousand purposes. He’d shifted along the spectrum, jumping skins and personalities and finding ways to belong everywhere he needed to.

That didn’t work when you lived in one place, no matter that Port Damali was large enough for him to disappear into. You couldn’t show up to work with one face and leave with another, and there wasn’t enough magic in the day for Fjord to hide the whole time.

And, really, he didn’t want to.

That was a realization he’d come to, after a while with the Nine. It was hard to be looked down on, to be judged and found wanting for nothing but the color of his skin and the contents of his mouth. He couldn’t imagine that it would ever become easy, that it would never hurt just a little.

But  _he_ wasn’t the problem.

Jester, beautiful and blue and sharp-fanged, wasn’t the problem.

Molly, handsome and red-eyed and more interested in a good time than he’d ever been in hurting people, hadn’t been the problem.

Fjord had spent three decades feeling sorry for who he was, and those last two months alone in Port Damali—catching side eyes and empty smiles after having gotten so used to acceptance—had worn it right out of him.

Luckily, a storm had rolled into town just as he was getting particularly restless, bringing with it a much missed face, a reminder of where he belonged and a letter requesting his return to Nicodranas (“You are making Jester _sad,_ you asshole. She doesn’t believe you when you say that you’re ‘fine’ anymore. Come home.”)

When Yasha rode out two days later, Fjord was at her side.

 

 

For all their power, there’s no way for either he or Jester to make cleaning up the floor go any faster while also keeping the floor and the kitchen intact. Sometimes, realizations like that make him feel a bit foolish.

With all the abilities they have, with all the things they’ve done and can do, _this_ is something they’re powerless against?

_A dirty floor?_

Other times, realizations like that are the only reason he feels like a person at the end of the day. Fjord takes the mixed blessing as it is and tries not to get too far into his head. (He fails, mostly. But he tries.)

“How you doing over there Jes?”

“Fjooord,” Jester groans from the other side of the kitchen, only her kicking feet visible from behind the large center table, lined with pans and tins. “This is boooring, Fjord.”

“You said you wanted to help today,” he reminds her. She groans again. The sound of her scrubbing grows louder and even more ferocious.

“ _I knooow_.”

Unlike he and Beau, who generally had their days more or less arranged around work, Jester’s schedule was sporadic at best, based around all kinds of appointments and whims—tattooing and portrait painting, singing with her mother at the Chateau or meeting with the small collection of Traveler worshipers she’d found or converted in the city.

The liveliness and unpredictability of it suited Jester.

The periods of purposeless downtime did _not_.

Since she couldn’t go to the Cobalt Observatory with Beau (who still grimaced whenever she heard the name) and was forbidden access to Tidepeak unless there were _extremely_ extenuating circumstances—that meant that Jester hung around the bakery a lot.

Fjord didn’t really _need_ the help—that’s what Apple and Salna were there for—but each time, against his better judgment, he consented to Jester’s unique brand of assistance, which mostly included adding new ingredients to what they baked because she was _sure_ that they would make it better (which she was not _always_ wrong about, to be fair), or simply quadrupling the amount of an ingredient the recipe needed because _that is not enough vanilla,_ _Fjord_.

“Wait,” Jester’s scrubbing peters out and Fjord glances back at her.

She’s sat up from the floor onto her knees, just tall enough that the top half of her head peeks over the table at him. Her eyes glint with an unholy, ominous light that Fjord feels a bit personally threatened by. He wishes, not for the first time, that he was any good at telling Jester to calm down because her next words are, “Fjord, _what if_ we destroy this part of the floor and then I use Mending on it?”

“...Jester.”

“It would be a completely new floor!”

“Jester.”

“New things are the _cleanest_!”

“...alright.”

It’s not quite as simple as that, because though Jester swears that there should be at least one pickaxe in either her newest Haversack or the Bag of Holding (“From that mine,” she says. “Which mine?” He asks, because that’s not nearly specific enough. “The one with those weird vampires.” “ _Which_ weird vampires?”), but they’re both quickly distracted by the items they _can_ find in the bags.

By the time Beau wanders in just after sunset, almost three hours after the spill, Jester has only just unearthed the pickaxe and what little free space there is along the kitchen walls is lined with old oddities and nasty knick-knacks well past the point they should have been thrown away.

Beau sweeps into the kitchen with a scowl, ink-splotches splattered all over her and her bag in the process of falling off her shoulder, already complaining.

“Fucking _nerds_ and their goddamn perfect me—” she stops, mid-step, to stare at something by the wall.

Her face, as much as it’s capable of doing so when she's annoyed, lights up.

“Is that my _r_ _o_ _c_ _feather_ _pen_?”

“Yup!” Jester hums merrily from where she’s chipping away at the floor. There’s a makeshift bandanna wrapped around her face that Fjord is almost sure was originally his shirt. He’d complain, but it had been enough trouble convincing Jester to let him move the food out of the room before she started attacking the floor, so he’ll take what he can get at this point. “I thought you lost it when that cult set our inn on fire but I must have put it in the Haversack and forgot about it.”

Beau pauses in her dash toward the pen to press a loud, smacking kiss to Jester’s forehead. “You are the best wife in the whole world.”

Jester preens, sitting up and peeling the bandanna down. She leans back, hooking a hand around the back of Beau’s head before she stands back up and pressing several long, sweaty kisses to her mouth.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Fjord coughs pointedly. “Fiance.”

_Finally_ , Beau pulls back. “Bitch,” she says, and flips him off for the correction. He laughs, easing himself off the counter, careful of his bad leg, especially temperamental as he'd forgotten to stretch it last night.

“I’m just saying—if you two invited me to your wedding and then got married in secret I’d be a bit put out.”

Jester pouts at him. “Fjooord, we wouldn’t do that. Who would be my best man if we didn’t invite you to our secret wedding?”

Beau’s head shoots up. “Hey hey wait. He’s _my_ best man. You were gonna ask No- _Veth_ , damnit.” Fjord hums, sympathetic to the mistake. __Veth__ hadn't wanted the Nine to call her by her original name till she was actually a halfing again and, while they tried, three years worth of habit was hard to kick.

Jester looks thoughtful, tilting her head from side to side before she shrugs and grins. “ _She_ will definitely wear a dress if I ask her _and_ she can help my mom with my hair.” She shoots a pointed look at Fjord, who turns away, whistling, till Jester refocuses on the floor and begins unloading cantrips onto the damaged stones.

Beau sidles up to stand next to him, bumping their arms together to get him to face her, only to end up with a face full of feather. She smirks when he scowls and backs up—not that it helps, really. The feather on the pen was massive, longer than Fjord’s arm and heavy enough that Beau was barely able to write properly with it till she got it enchanted to be almost weightless.

Beau flourishes the feather at him again, snickering when he ducks away and outright laughing when he manages to trip over her discarded bag as he retreats, though she does grab him before he falls.

“You’re being unusually clumsy today. You high?” Beau frowns when he sputters, leaning in to squint at him. “Concussed?”

“No-”

Her frown deepens.

“Is your leg bothering you again?”

Fjord’s face warms and he coughs, hoping the blush will be too hard to see for her to pick up on it. “No, it’s fi—” Beau’s darkening expression makes him abandon that sentence. He tries deflection instead.

“Something up at Yussah’s?” Beau’s eyes narrow at him, obviously aware of what he was up to. “You seemed annoyed when you came in.” That apparently strikes a nerve with her despite her knowing exactly what he was doing because she stiffens up and nearly _growls_ at him.

“Damn right something is up at Yussah’s, the Observatory too.”

Fjord pauses, glancing from Beau to Jester and back. “...our kind of something?”

“No, not—well.” Her mouth twists. “He’s definitely our kind of something, like, _exactly_ our kind of something, but he’s not an active threat.” She thinks for a moment. “Probably.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “He’s exactly our kind of something but he’s probably not a threat? Beau that—“

“Oh no, he’s definitely a _threat_ , don’t get me wrong, that fucker has danger written all over him. He’s just probably not gonna cause any problems.” A pause. “Probably.”

Fjord sighs. “You aren’t making me feel real good about this, honestly. Who is _he_?”

“A fucking _wizard_ ,” she growls. “He’s working with Yussah _and_ over at the Observatory.”

Fjord’s heart leaps into his throat.

They’d only had a few dealings with powerful wizards over the years, outside of Yussah—mostly when they’d been scrambling to rescue Yeza from a manor house near Rexxentrum that had turned out to be nearly as secure as a military fort. They’d barely escaped from that with their lives and only luck and a very well timed explosion had enabled them to kill one of the wizards and get free with Yeza in tow. “Cerberus Assembly?”

Beau chews at her lip, contemplating her answer. “No,” she finally says. “Yussah never would have agreed to that, you know how he feels about them. The Cobalt Soul briefed me a little about him—he’s an informant on the Assembly. The wording was kind of strange though.”

“Strange how?”

“Well, they definitely don’t just _trust_ him—he’s with Yussah and at the Observatory because there are people keeping an eye on him there.” _Like me_ , her suspicious eyes add. "He traded them information for a way out of the Empire and the Assembly, somewhere safe to stay. They still wanna keep tabs on him though, see if there's anything he kept to himself."

“That sounds like a good plan.”

Beau grunts, glaring at him. “Yeah, _you_ would think that, you don’t have to spend your whole day around mister ‘ _I remember everything with perfect clarity, here’s all the information you asked for, why would you need Beauregard’s notes that she spent eight hours on,’_ ” she mocks in a low, vaguely accented voice that might have been Zemnian, if it was shoved into a bag and beaten in an alley.

“Oh.” Despite the possible seriousness of the situation, Fjord can’t resist grinning. “You’re _jealous_ of him.”

Beau swats him with the feather again and snaps it out of range just in time to avoid his sneeze. “Hey, watch it! I just got this back!” She shifts to hold it behind her, ineffectively shielding it from his sight considering that half its length stuck out from the opposite side of her back.

“If you don’t want me to sneeze on the feather then don’t wave it around in my face.”

“If you ruin my only feather _you_ are gonna have to find another Roc for us to kill, asshole.”

Fjord opens his mouth to retort but pauses.

“...you seriously only took _one feather_ from that Roc?”

It’s Beau’s turn to blush. “Hey! You didn’t take any feathers at all, I did better than you.”

“Of course I didn’t take any, what was I gonna do with a feather that big?”

“Look _fucking awesome_ when you write letters and shit, that’s what!”

Fjord raises his hands up in mock surrender but Beau lowers her waving fist and sighs. She shakes her head and clenches her eyes open and shut a few times in what he vaguely recognizes as a ‘thought redirection’ technique Caduceus had taught her at some point.

“Okay no, that doesn’t matter,” she says, once she’s done. “This shit could be important, guys. All I’m saying is be careful, alright?” Beau turns to face Jester, eyes so open and soft Fjord has to look away. “Especially you, Jes. I know you can take care of yourself but _watch out_.”

Jester answers a cheerful, if reluctant, affirmative and Beau turns back to face Fjord, expression stern. “I don’t know that he’ll do anything, but still. I don’t like this.”

He can’t help but agree.

“And what’s this wizard’s name?”

Beau sneers.

“Caleb Widogast.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to the first chapter was so amazing guys, thank you so much!<33  
>   
> Also, update on the status of this fic: I've made a Loose plot skeleton since posting chapter 1 so this fic is actually technically going somewhere now!  
> (I regrettably still have to figure out. well. everything else that'll need to happen in this fic to fill out the main plot, do some M9 bonding and give the widofjord time to develop, but at least I know how it ends!)

Though he’s only lived in it for a little over two weeks, Caleb likes his house.

The Soltryce Academy had been grand in all aspects, with everything from the dining hall to the dorms being opulent to the point of intimidation. It had left him constantly on edge during his attendance there like he was trailing dirt and about to be scolded for it. Ikithon’s manors were tamer but even worse, their stateliness _cold_ rather than impressive. His anxiety had been worse there too, as had his fear of consequences. Regardless, his house is as far from either of them as is possible, and it’s a welcome change.

The furniture in his little house is worn in a way that speaks of history more than poverty, use rather than abuse. It’s small and warm and the old couch the previous owners had left behind has floral patterned pillows.

It’s _his_.

Most importantly, all the windows open. He’s checked every night since he arrived ****, and that fact has yet to change.

There are other differences from the Academy and the manors, equally obvious.

He can reach the ceiling of his house if he stands on the dining table (a bad idea, based on the sounds it had made when he tried that. He likely needs a new one. He hasn’t managed to put on that much weight since he’d come to Nicodranas.). Several of the floorboards creak when walked on, and there’s not a single marble pillar within its walls.

Eyes still watch him come and go in the mornings and evenings, but he doesn’t mind.

After all, the windows open.

(And eyes on his front door couldn’t stop him from leaving if he wanted to, anyway.)

He knows the Cobalt Soul doesn’t trust him yet—that would be a ridiculous assumption. He’d given them information, yes, and he’d gone to them willingly and openly, but that didn’t guarantee that he was trustworthy. Often, it could mean the opposite.

That was an old enough trick—coming to your enemies with just enough information to entice, just enough to get on their good sides. Just enough to get them where you wanted them.

Caleb remembers those lessons well.

_Perfectly_ , in fact.

Still, in spite of the watching, it’s...nice here, in Nicodranas.

The city is colorful and lively, with a sort of vibrant _heart_ to it that he’d never expected to find anywhere outside of a book. The ocean is massive and awe-inspiring, and he’s equal parts drawn to and terrified of it. It’s warm here, too, and somehow even the way the sun shines looks different. Parts of the city near the dock stink of dead fish, yes, but he doesn’t mind too much. He’s seen, and smelt, far worse.

It’s all so very unlike Blumenthal or Soltryce or any of Ikithon’s manors—so much _better_. It helps, too, that the ever-present visibility of _change_ makes it easy to remember who he is now.

Who he has _chosen_ to be.

Thankfully, there’s little about Nicodranas that reminds him of the past. The Observatory was enough by itself, and sometimes, even it was too much.

Caleb had once loved libraries.

A part of him still did, even. So much knowledge within them, so much history, all of it endlessly fascinating—but they’re absolutely steeped with memories for him, more of them bad than good, and that makes the library of the Observatory something of a trial.

He can almost see Astrid and Eodwulf in the stacks sometimes, shooting gap-toothed grins at him from between book spines or peeking out the sides of shelves at him, playfully ducking away when he turns to look. They aren’t real, of course. The three of them had been young when they went to Soltryce and young when Ikithon took them in but not _that_ young.

So the visions are nothing, nothing more than misplaced memories, his brain filling in familiar sights with even more familiar faces. Still, the sight of them is as painful as it is dear. He hasn’t truly seen Eodwulf for years and Astrid…

Astrid is well within her rights to kill him, if they ever meet again. He wouldn’t raise a hand to stop her.

As much as it hurts to see them though, he far prefers it to the alternative, which is currently driving him from the library, posthaste.

“—your execution is poor and if you continue to have such foolish disregard for your work you will be disciplined, Eodwulf. Continue to burden Bren with tutoring and _you_ will be incorporated into his lessons. You wouldn’t want to do that to your friend, would you?”

Caleb shakes his head and leans hard against one of the shelves, reaching up to card a hand through his hair. He clenches at it until sparks of pain flare up, pricks of bright sensation that do little to help him shut out Ikithon’s voice.

It’s only in his head, he knows. Fact doesn’t help him here.

Not when it feels so real, not when there’s no escaping the demons attached to his soul, the claws latched into his mind that _stab_ and _bleed_. He tightens his grip till he’s on the verge of ripping out his hair.

He is alive.

He is free.

He’s going _outside_.

Caleb forces himself, stuttering and slow, to _breathe_.

_In._

_Out._

_In._

_Out._

 

 

One of the in-training monks is managing the front desk when he makes it out of the stacks, his heart still pounding in his chest. The trainee flicks through papers with a nervous look on her face that only worsens when she notices his approach.

“M-Mr. Widogast!” Her voice does something that’s not quite a squeak but is likely a close relative and her lips pull up into a smile that quivers around the edges. How, exactly, she’s made it this far into the program while being so timid is a mystery.

She must have a very impressive punch, he supposes.

“Are you finished for today?” She asks, hesitantly, like she’s not sure she’s qualified to speak with him.

“Ah,” Caleb clears his throat and thinks better of trying to return the smile. He’s well enough aware that it would make him look _more_ frightening, rather than less. “Yes.”

Her own smile steadies at his response. Reassured, he expects, by him not growing fangs or screaming at her.

“A-alright! You can report to Expositor Beauregard and then you’re free for the day, your escort is ready.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Caleb waits several beats for further elaboration.

None comes.

“And where is she?”

He knows that Expositor Beauregard must have an office somewhere in the building but it’s not as though such things are labeled (a choice he can appreciate the forethought of, no matter its inconvenience in this moment). Additionally, while the Cobalt Soul has been willing enough to allow him into select parts of the Observatory, he doubts they would appreciate him rooting around in their more official, private rooms, no matter his lack of intentions against them.

He’s also rather sure that the Expositor is very seldom _in_ her office at all, judging by her frequent prowling of the library stacks, training yards and temple.

“Oh!” The attendant jumps, her fingers fluttering over her papers. Caleb forces himself to look up and away from the desk, lest it seem he’s paying them a suspicious amount of attention. Even still, he catches a glimpse of them.

  _“-shipment copies from Archive delayed due to heavy rains inhibiting travel down the Amber Road-”_

_“-write more often really, dear. I know your father can be a bother but he does love you, Tress, and talking can only help. I-”_

_“Meditation is not a necessary requirement in the channeling and sensing of one’s ki but it is a recommended one. Centering oneself-”_

“R-right! She’s in her office at the moment, actually. Third floor, fourth door on the left.”

He nods.

“Thank you, Acolyte Tress.”

Her eyes go wide at his unexpected recognition, before she settles, smile growing even larger. “Of course, Mr. Widogast. Happy to help!” Despite her general nervousness, the words ring with a level of truth that he finds rather uncomfortable.

Caleb nods at her again and, as soon as she looks away, retreats.

 

 

He’s halfway down the hall on the third floor, nearly to the Expositor’s office, when a loud voice, barely muffled by the walls, freezes him in place. “No I don’t have any extras, dumbass. Jes and Fjord took them down to that orphanage in the Skew again-”

The voice is gruff and rather deep for a woman’s. Another voice, lower, responds to the first, indiscernible due to its volume. Whatever it says makes Expositor Beauregard (and it must be her, he knows, it’s coming from the correct door and she’s rather...recognizable, especially with his memory) snort.

“If you want any of my brother-in-law’s stuff you _could_ just pay for it, like everyone else.”

A shorter pause, followed by another snort.

“I’m not everyone else, duh,” the Expositor says, vaguely smug. “And if I bring you stuff then you won’t get to stare creepily at Fjord while you wait.”

“I already don’t get to do that!” The unknown voice protests, loud enough for Caleb to hear. “He’s barely ever at the counter now anyway!”

Beauregard starts to answer but Caleb pays it no mind, silently backing down the hall to the stairs before retracing his steps, making a point to walk at normal volume for once. His approach is noticed this time, and Beauregard’s voice cuts out well before he arrives at the door. Relieved that he won’t get in trouble for unintentional eavesdropping, he knocks.

“Yeah? Come in.”

The Expositor’s office, Caleb notices as he steps in, is small and littered with loose papers and teetering stacks of books. It’s not the type of place he would have expected from a woman who has repeatedly taunted him for being a nerd, but perhaps that too is to be expected.

He hasn’t heard much about her or the other members of the Mighty Nine—though he’s aware that the ‘Jes’ she’d mentioned is likely the Expositor’s wife and ‘Fjord’ is another member of the group living in the city—but what he has heard has greatly emphasized their general... _eccentricity_.

Regardless, the woman herself sits at her desk, lightly sweaty and watching him with narrowed eyes, a half-eaten meat pie held in one hand. Unconsciously, he starts breathing through his mouth. The long-haired half-elf at the other side of the desk has a much more open face than the Expositor, and a similarly more interested gaze that scans over him. Caleb resists the urge to stiffen under her appraisal, even more so when her mouth curls up at one side.

Thankfully, the Expositor reaches out across the desk and smacks the other woman on the temple before she can say anything. “Down Lil, he’s not that pretty.”

“How would you know anyway?” The half-elf, Lil, huffs at the scolding and turns her head just enough away from the other woman to wink at him, unseen.

“Why do people always say that like I’m fucking blind? I can _see_ him, it just doesn’t do anything for me,” Beauregard says, sounding bored. A more well-adjusted person might find offense in being discussed and dismissed like that. Caleb can’t bring himself to care.

He straightens up when Beauregard turns her attention on him, thankful that his arm doesn’t snap into an instinctive salute. The Expositor is nothing like Ikithon or anyone else who’d commanded him during his time with the Assembly, but there’s something about her brusqueness and confidence that makes his hand itch to reach for his heart.

“You done, or did you need something else?” She asks, and he welcomes the change in subject, immediately shaking his head.

“I’m finished for the day,” he confirms, eyeing the way her tense posture relaxes at his words. The Expositor is _interesting_ and Caleb, no matter that it’s not his best idea, is curious.

No one in the Observatory trusts him but Expositor Beauregard's wariness feels different than that of the others and that, coupled with the way many of the monks and clerics in the Observatory look at her, raises questions he’d really like answers to.

Caleb, even when he was Bren, has always wanted to _know_ things, whatever they might be.

“Alright then, come here.” The Expositor curls her hand towards herself and, reluctantly, Caleb approaches the desk and stands by the half-elf, reaching his arms out across the desk. Beauregard leans forward to look at his wrists, one hand sliding a drawer open.

“Lil, could you-”

His vision cuts out as Lil’s hand slides in front of his eyes, the room suddenly nothing but black and the trace bits of red-orange light that curl around the edges of the woman’s fingers. Caleb forces himself not to remember and to breathe, very slowly, through his nose.

In.

Out.

The Expositor’s hands, warm and strong, rotate one of his wrists, pressing something cool against his skin.

It clicks.

_In._

_Out._

_In._

_Out—_

“Alright,” Beauregard’s voice comes from the dark. The hand withdraws and Caleb blinks at the light, startlingly bright even after only having his eyes covered for such a short time. She frowns at him, eyebrows furrowing.

“Widogast, breathe.”

_In_.

“Ah, yes. Apologies, Expositor Beauregard.” He steps back, distancing himself from the desk, the women sitting at it and the odd looks they’re both giving him. His chest feels tight. Caleb clears his throat. “Am I free to go then?”

“Y-”

“N-”

The women begin speaking at once, then pause and look at each other. Beauregard smacks the half-elf again, scowling playfully. She thankfully doesn’t turn to look at him again, waving a hand at the door in obvious dismissal. “Shut up Lil. Yes, you can go, Widogast.”

He goes.

(And later, when he gets home, he ushers his familiar out the door, buries himself behind the cat’s eyes and remembers what Beauregard had said— _that orphanage in the Skew—_ perfectly.

Bren had always been curious, but _Caleb_ can actually search out the answers to his questions.

He really does like Nicodranas.)

 

* * *

(- **a conversation, not overheard**

A good thirty seconds after Widogast closes the door and his footsteps fade down the hall to the stairs, Beau sighs. “That was weird, right? That wasn’t just me?”

Lil’s eyes don’t move from the door. “Yeah, that was weird.”

Beau falls back in her chair, the springs creaking their protest. “Men,” she growls halfheartedly up at the ceiling.

“Men,” Lil agrees. She sounds much happier about it.

Beau rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue, crossing her arms behind her head and leaning back even further in her chair.

She’d known that Widogast was a bit...messed up. That wasn’t a surprise—he was weird and quiet and, even though she hadn’t been given many details on his whole thing with the Assembly, he was obviously six different kinds of traumatized by it. Maybe seven.

Still, he’d been fine with the cuff before.

Fuck, he’d probably been more okay with the cuff than _she_ had been when she first had to put it on him, which made whatever _that_ was just now even weirder.

Beau was good with weird.

Beau was not good at leaving weird alone.

She sighs again.

_Fuck_.)

* * *

 

 

When he was a child, Fjord had wanted a family.

It didn’t even have to be _his_ family, his first one, he’d decided. Just a mom and a dad, maybe siblings _—_ people who would love him for who and _what_ he was. They wouldn’t be his blood but that didn’t matter, they would be better because they would _want_ him, and that was more than enough.

As he’d gotten older (and the bullies got meaner, and the people more suspicious, and the adults more likely to believe the children that weren’t ugly and green and _wrong_ ) love had become less important than acceptance.

(It wasn’t, actually. That was a lie. But the latter had seemed easier to get than the former, and he was pretty familiar with lowering his expectations by that point.)

He could deal with being alone, as long as people stopped side-eyeing him in the street, as long as his skin stopped crawling at the sight of his own reflection. His reevaluation of his desires had done nothing to change the world around him, however, and he grew up without either.

But then, then he sailed off to sea with the man who was almost like a father and their ship sank and Fjord, for the first time in his life...

He got _lucky_.

That didn’t happen to most people like him, most _kids_ like he’d been. Orphans had it rough from the start, even more so when they were so obviously out of place, so obviously didn’t _belong_. There weren’t many—tieflings were rare enough and half-orcs about the same—but there were even fewer human families that wanted a green kid or one with horns and less still that could be _trusted_ with one.

That was a problem Fjord didn’t yet know how to fix, or if he even could some day.

But he made cookies for a living now, and he knew exactly where the one orphanage in the Skew was that took in all the kids that no one else wanted. And _that_ was a problem he could fix.

“Nugget! Say goodbye!”

Well, him, Jester and Jester’s dog ****, anyway.

Nugget yips at Jester’s command and raises himself up onto his hind legs to wave a paw at the crowd of paint splattered children. Two of the kids piled up at the orphanage’s front door, the little twin tiefling girls, both squeak and try to make a break for the dog but the matron blocks their exit and ushers the kids back in. She smiles at Jester then Fjord, thin-lipped and conspicuously baring her tusks, before firmly shaking her head.

The door swings shut with a loud snap.

Jester stares at it for a moment before she hums, spinning around and leading the way out the gate and down the street. “...you know, I think she’s really starting to like us,” she comments.

“What?” Fjord chokes and sputters. Missus Koal definitely felt several things toward them but, judging by how harried she looked whenever they left her with dirty children, hyped up on sugar, _fond_ was not one of them.

“Yeah!” Jester twirls around to face him, walking backwards. “Well, she always liked me, you know,” she amends, her nose scrunching up. “I’m me! _But_ I think you’re growing on her!” She grins encouragingly and Fjord blinks back at her. It feels a little like she’s trying to pull one of the ‘ _here’s how you interact with people’_ lessons he used to do for Beau.

He’s...not sure how to feel about being on the receiving end of it.

“Thank you,” he says instead, because it’s always safer to be nice to Jester.

Jester’s grin softens a bit, into something less teasing and more heartfelt, echoing with promises long fulfilled and oaths he knows will never be broken. “You are _very_ welcome, Fjord.”

He lets himself smile back because it’s _Jester_ , though the moment is quickly ruined when her eyes snap to the side and something makes her tail whip excitedly behind her, nearly smashing the empty basket she’s carrying on it into the ground. Fjord opens his mouth to ask but Jester is already darting across the street to an alley, Nugget bouncing along behind her, before he can say a word.

He watches them go, curious, though his confusion quickly turns to dread as Jester turns and he sees the fuzzy orange cat in her grasp.

“Really, Jes?” He asks when she returns, her hands hooked underneath its front legs and the animal held triumphantly in the air.

“Kitty!” She ignores his pointed sniff, stretching her arms out to dangle the cat in front of his face. Its legs sway back and forth in the air, swinging like a metronome. “Orange kitty!” She adds, as though his problem with cats is what color they are rather than that they make his brain leak out his nose. “Look how cute he is Fjord!”

Fjord takes a step to the side and resigns himself to Jester’s latest whim.

“I can see that.”

The poor, stupid cat lets Jester cuddle it all the way back to the bakery before it finally scampers out of her arms when she insists on trying to open the door while carrying it. It quickly disappears down the street and into an alley, to Jester’s loud protest and Nugget’s disappointed whining.

 

 

And, though none of them can see it, the cat disappears from the alley as well, reappearing halfway across the city when a snap beckons it home. Immediately, long fingers curl into its scruff and neck, scratching. “Yes, you’re a very good boy.”

The fae purrs, indulging in the simple pleasure of feline existence.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caleb sounds creepy, doesn't he? I actively attempted to make him sound less creepy but this is literally as un-creepy as he's gonna get and really, creepiness is a character trait for Caleb "my octopus is hungry and so am I" Widogast.  
> (minor episode 65 spoilers below!)  
> .  
> .  
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> .  
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> me, inappropriately smug that Beau immediately went for that roc feather in the nest: _called it_! (that makes this fic like .01% more canonical until they inevitably fight the roc and strip it down for more feathers)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the love for last chapter guys! <33 Not super happy with this chapter despite much poking and fussing but it's finished so no point in needlessly sitting on it ~~any longer than I already have~~ , right?
> 
> * if you got two notifications about the posting of this chapter sorry! I should stop trying to post from drafts cause I always mess it up

* * *

 

(- **A feeling, no longer had** :

Fjord does like Jester, is the thing.

He likes her a lot—she’s bright and funny and _loud_ in a way that he was afraid to be for so long. He admires her, the way she takes up space and draws eyes and doesn’t apologize for doing either. She’s shamelessly _alive_ and she’s beautiful, of course she is. So he likes her, yes, just…

Not the way she wants him to.

It made the lingering looks _awkward_ , once he finally noticed them. Well, more awkward—Jester had her own special kind charm most of the time but she was very clearly not sure _how_ to flirt so the whole thing was a bit...painful. So be easier on both of them, Fjord had decided to play dumb about it. Eventually, he figured, Jester would meet more people and realize that she could better and that would put an end to the whole thing.

Judging by the soft “Fjord, can we talk?” and the way she’s leading him to the edge of the camp, he’s assuming that plan hadn’t worked out as well as he’d hoped. Fjord looks over toCaduceus, hopeful for some excuse to put off whatever conversation Jester wants to have.

Caduceus, stirring a pot by the fire, looks back at him, eyes lulled half-shut. He waves, the gesture slow and soft, like it’s too much effort to move his hand very fast.

None of the others notice Jester walking off or Fjord lingering there awkwardly so, resigned, he waves at Caduceus and then turns and follows her.

Jester stops at the edge of camp, hopping up into the cart. She frowns when he just stands there, her eyebrows pulling together. “Well?” She pats the space next to her expectantly.

Fjord, more than a little out of his depth at this point, settles down beside her.

Despite the way his stomach is tying itself into knots, because the last thing he wants to do is hurt Jester they just...sit there. Eventually, he relaxes, listening to the familiar sounds of camp—bugs chirping in the trees, the steady breathing of the horses and Beau in the distance, cursing at Nott.

“—you’re distracting me, stop—”

“Ooh, having a little performance anxiety, Beau?”

“Nott you fuck—”

The bickering continues, drawing him in and making him smile. There’s a steady cadence to Nott and Beau arguing over something neither of them really care about at this point, and it’s damn near _soothing_ to listen to. These crazy assholes have ruined him for other company.

Not that he minds, really. These days he’s not sure what he would do with “normal” people anyway.

“Fjord?”

He jolts, knocking his elbow into the side of the cart. “Yeah, Jester?”

There’s no response for a while and when he dares to look over at her she’s just staring down into her lap, folding the skirt of her dress into little bundles before smoothing it back down, over and over again.

“You know how I like you?”Jester asks eventually. _Fold, fold, fol_ _d, smooth_ her hands go on her skirt. She doesn’t look at him.

It’s so tempting to lie to, to tell her that he’d _actually_ somehow managed to miss all the giggles and stares. She might even believe him—every member of the Nine knows that he’s not really the most observant person. Lying also has the advantage of being easy, whereas the idea of answering her question feels like facing down another dragon. Still...he doesn’t want to lie to Jester like this, not flat out to her face, not about something important. Not when she _asked_.

“Yeah, I do.”

_Fold, fold, fold. Smooth._

Jester doesn’t say anything.

The silence is worse than if she’d snapped at him, and Fjord is halfway to figuring out some lopsided, awkward apology— _the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you—_ when she speaks again. “Well, I’ve been thinking and. I don’t know if I do anymore?” Getting the words out seems to make her more confident because she nods to herself, lets go of her skirt.

“Yeah, I don’t think I like you anymore.”

The words die on Fjord’s tongue.

He...has no idea what to say to that.

He’d never been entirely comfortable with people finding him attractive, no matter how many times it’d happened, no matter how useful it had been on occasion. These days it just makes his skin prick and tingle when people take second looks at him or let their eyes linger, makes him feel like there’s something on his face that he can’t see. It’s better than the way it used to feel, like it was some big joke that everyone knew about but him.

Still, for all his experience with people finding him attractive, he’d never had to have a conversation about them _not_ doing so anymore.

Luckily, Jester continues without his input.

“I still like you, I mean! Like, you’re my very good friend, of course,” she assures. “And you’re very handsome still!” She pats him on the shoulder a few times and squeezes at his bicep, wiggling her eyebrows in a way that might’ve been uncomfortable if it wasn’t Jester, who’d gotten up close and personal with his insides several times.

He chuckles and Jester, reassured, continues talking though her voice is a bit slower, a bit more serious, like the words are fragile in her mouth.

“I think that I got a little bit caught up in it all when I met you, you know?” She tilts her head back against the side of the cart and Fjord does too. Together they gaze up at the wide expanse of stars spread, bright and brilliant, above them. “Just-you hear all those stories, right? About people going out on adventures and meeting handsome men or beautiful women, and they make all these wonderful friends and do all these incredible things and they fall in love.”

She pauses and draws a deep, stuttering breath, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“And you were so nice and handsome, Fjord, and then we made all these wonderful friends,” she waves a hand out at the rest of the Nine—Caduceus retrieving bowls from his pack, Yasha investigating the splash of orange flowers at the base of a tree, Beau and Nott, argument done, with their heads bent close together over the same book.

“And we’ve done all these _incredible_ things,” Jester’s voice cracks in the middle of _incredible_ , at the weight of all the memories condensed into the word. And then, so soft he can barely hear it:

“I love you, Fjord, really but...I don’t think it’s how the stories meant it, you know ****?”

He leans his head down to rest on hers.

“Yeah Jes, I know.”)

* * *

  


  


Fjord is losing a fight to a bag of flour in the back room when he hears a familiar yowling start up from the kitchen. He sighs and—despite himself, his desire for a clean workspace and his allergies—the sound is fond.

_That damn cat_.

Considering Jester’s fondness for animals, he’d felt very lucky when the cat had run off the first time they saw it. But then the stupid thing had shown up at the window the next morning and reliably popped up every few days since then. He’s sneezed more in the last week and half than he had in the past few years _combined_. So, of course, Beau has already made up and whittled down a list of names for it. Last night, when the three of them had been sprawled around the sitting room before bed, she’d still been debating between her two remaining favorites.

(“We could name the cat Fistfight _and_ Hangover, if you really can’t pick,” he’d pointed out after a while. She’d snorted at him, like _he_ was the one who was ridiculous.)

The light in the small storage room dims, a shadow falling over him and Fjord looks over his shoulder. Salna is standing there behind him, her wide shoulders nearly filling the doorway. “Boss, your little friend is here,” she says, voice low and rusty, her mouth pulled into a gentle smile that her tusks render charmingly lopsided. “He wants your attention.”

“That thing is a pest, not a pet,” he reminds her, because he’s the only one who (occasionally) remembers that. “Do you know how much dough I’ve had to throw away because I sneezed in it?”

_None_ , actually, but it was the principle of the thing.

Salna just smiles and shakes her head. “And yet you still let him in,” she points out, and then, “get up off the floor, I’ll get your flour.” _Old man_ , her twinkling eyes tease as she pulls him up off the ground.

“I could do it,” he protests. It’s probably even the truth.

Salna, with the same sort of familiar, quiet wisdom he’d grown used to with Caduceus, hums thoughtfully. She lifts the bag up and onto her shoulder in one smooth, well-practiced motion. “I can do it easier though, so you don’t have to.”

Fjord…can’t really argue with that.

Salna, three heads taller and with biceps as thick as his calves, was more a credit to her orc-blood than he would ever be to his. It’s why he’d hired her. Well, that and how _tired_ she and Apple had looked when they’d first moved out of the orphanage together.

They head out into the kitchen and the other-half orc settles the bag of flour next to the counter, dusting her hands off on her apron. “You going to—” she starts to say before from the window comes another low, drawn out and decidedly unimpressed: “’ _roooooooow!_ ”

The pitch of it quivers a bit, like the damn thing is trying to yodel, and Fjord can’t help but chuckle as he ambles over to the other side of the kitchen, leaning his elbows down on the freshly wiped counter to stare at the cat on the other side. A few raindrops still cling to the glass, leaving them, the wet shine of the cobblestone street and the edge of a gargantuan puddle the only reminder of the night and morning’s heavy rains.

The cat, unlike the window, is completely soaked through.

“ _M_ _r_ _rrr_ _!_ ” it calls again, looking disdainfully at Fjord and the way he’s just watching it, rather than letting it inside. “ _’oooow!_ ”

Fjord whistles, leaning down further to look at its bright green eyes. “You sure have quite the voice there, little fella.” He really wouldn’t have expected such a small animal to contain so much volume, but the proof was right there on his windowsill.

“He’s pretty impressive,” Salna agrees warmly. “But I just remembered—you gonna go drop off that book for Ms. Beau soon?”

Fjord’s mind blanks out.

He’d completely forgotten about that.

The look on his face must say that clearly enough because Salna pats him on the shoulder, laughing gently. “You have plenty of time, don’t worry. And I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you didn’t—”

Beau had yelled instructions at him when she’d sprinted out of the store into the pouring rain that morning. Several threats had been made against his belongings and his person. “She would mind,” Fjord says, with the absolute confidence of someone who hadn’t taken Beau seriously once and had lived to regret it. “Actually, we’re done in here so I could do that right—”

“ _Mrrooow!_ ”

As one, they turn back to the window, where the cat has stood up on its hind legs, front paws pressed up to the glass. Its eyes seem much larger than they had last time he’d looked at it. Fjord laughs and, aware that if he doesn’t do it Salna _will_ , unlatches the window. “You’re a little con-artist, aren’t you? I can appreciate that, come on in.”

It slips in as soon as the gap is wide enough and then, once securely stood on the dry counter, shakes itself. He curses when water comes flying off, grabbing blindly behind himself for the apron Apple had left thrown over one of the stools at the table. He throws it on the cat who, thankfully, stops shaking.

It _meow_ s despondently from underneath the fabric and Salna hisses sympathetically from where she’d had the foresight to back out of the splash zone. “Oof, you alright?”

Fjord shakes and wipes his face, grimacing at the gritty feel the dirty water leaves on his skin. “S’just water, but I really should have expected that.”

He sneezes.

“And that.”

For obvious reasons, he’d been reluctant to let the cat in when it started showing up at the window. His allergies and not wanting fur in the bread were good enough reasons alone, but there was also the fact that a stray being so interested in getting into the building seemed suspicious as hell. Beau had agreed with him at first (“if I wanted to spy on a place I would absolutely use a cute animal”), though neither of their protests had mattered in the face of Jester’s relentless enthusiasm.

Eventually, the cat won Beau over as well, and he’d been forced to give into peer pressure.

“ _Mrooow_.”

Fjord glares without real heat at the little orange head poking out of the folds of fabric before his breath stutters unpleasantly in his chest. He sneezes again, a deep, rattling thing that feels like it knocks his soul loose on the way out. He groans, mourning the lost peacefulness of his afternoon.

“Having trouble back there boss?”

Fjord turns, bleary-eyed, to look at the door to the front room where Apple’s head is peeking out from the door frame. He waves at the cat, trusting that that’s enough of an answer. The enthusiastic cheer of “kitty!” proves him right, as does the way they nearly bowl over him in their rush to get to the cat.

“Aw, poor little guy.” Apple coos at it sympathetically, “look at you, you’re all wet!” They pull the apron back over the cat and begin to rub it dry, all the way from the tips of its pointy ears to the end of its sleek tail. Salna claps him on the shoulder and heads back to the front room but Fjord lingers there, waiting till Apple finishes fussing and whisks the apron off the cat. Fjord clears his throat.

“Clean up and make sure this little guy doesn’t cause too much trouble?” He asks with a pointed look at the scattering of orange fur and dirty water the cat had already left on the counter.

Apple nods brightly, leaning forward to scoop it into their arms. “Sure! If we have him up front he might even attract customers, cute as he is.” Their arms are nearly closed around the cat when it makes a low, annoyed sound. They pause, looking unsure over whether or not to pick up the animal and, apparently waiting for such an opportunity, the cat suddenly _moves_ , running up Apple’s arm and using the additional height to spring up onto Fjord’s shoulder so fast he doesn’t even have time to flinch.

He freezes, staring motionlessly at Apple. They look back with wide, shocked eyes.

There is silence.

“ _Mrow,_ ” the cat says, directly into his ear.

Apple squeaks, looking far more thrilled by this new development than Fjord feels, even more so when he reaches up to remove the cat. It hunkers down on his shoulder, claws curling so deeply into his shirt that they graze his skin. He shivers, the sensation of something sharp brushing against his neck more familiar than he’d like.

He sneezes again.

Apple claps a hand over their mouth, though it doesn’t muffle their laughter quite enough.

“Clean this up and I’ll go drop off the book,” Fjord says, intentionally low and gruff, speaking with authority that he _technically_ has over them, even though it doesn’t feel like it at the moment.

Or, honestly, most of the time.

“ _We’ll_ drop off the book _,_ you mean,” Apple corrects, winking at the cat who has already spread itself out over his shoulders and seems quite comfortable.

As if to agree, it starts to purr.

The vibrations tickle the back of his neck.

Fjord sighs. “ _We’ll_ drop off the book, fine.”

  


  


Even after years of knowing the man, Fjord still isn’t sure quite what to think of Yussah. He respects him and he’s grateful that the wizard changed Nott back into a halfling the way she wanted but…

Maybe it’s some vague memory of Avantika or Uk’otoa or any array of the mysterious, magical people and things they’d encountered over the years, but there’s something about the elf that had left him itchy and paranoid since they’d first met him. (After he’d started having trouble with Uk’otoa there had been envy too, that Yussah had power that he was fully in control of, was fully _his_.)

Still, Beau likes him relatively well—which is a ringing character endorsement considering Beau’s _Beau_ ness—and they’ve worked with him enough that Fjord had figured he’d gotten over the itchiness. The way his shoulders tense up when he catches sight of the Tidepeak, gradually growing taller as he nears, makes him wonder if that wasn’t the case.

Or it could just be the way the cat’s claws pierce through his shirt into his skin as soon as he turns the last corner to the tower.

“Ow—damn it!”

Fjord prods at the cat, trying to get it to let go. Its entire furry body rocks with the motion—except its feet, anchored into his flesh. He pushes again and the damn thing jumps off his shoulders.

He grabs for it, cursing—visions of little broken cat paws flashing through his mind because he’s short for a half-orc but _still_. Fortunately, it lands on a window sill, fur puffed up and lips peeled back, scampering down onto the ground and away before he can bend to pick it up. The orange blur disappears down the street, weaving between passersby’s legs faster than he could ever follow. Fjord watches it go, not entirely sure how to feel about it.

Presumably, the cat would be fine but, on the off chance that it wasn’t, Jester would kill him. He’s quickly interrupted from thinking about his possible oncoming demise as a hand claps down forcefully on his shoulder.

“Hey ma-” the voice cuts off when Fjord jolts, nearly yelping as he turns to face it, hands raised toward his face.

And of course, because the last two minutes haven’t been bad enough, there’s Beau, standing there and blinking at him like he’s an idiot. Her extended arm falls, slowly, to her side. Fjord opens his mouth to say... _something_ , at least, but no words come out.

Beau recovers faster than him, staring for several unusually long seconds before she gathers up a sentence.

“What the fuck?” She asks and Fjord turns away, pursing his lips and taking a keen interest in the fishmonger on the side of the street. Beau snickers. “Okay if _that_ is your attempt at hand to hand you really have to join me out in the yard sometime.” His affronted expression makes her pat him on the arm, a quick _smack smack smack_ that only stings a little bit. “No, that was bad and you should feel bad.”

“I wasn’t trying to fight you,” he protests, finally turning back to face her. “You just startled me, that’s all.” It’s a deflection, and a poor one too, judging by the look on her face.

“ _Startled_ you, huh?” She asks, wry, absolutely not buying his bullshit and probably remembering the far too numerous times Fjord has done nearly the same thing in the house when he didn’t know she was awake yet. “You’re lucky Veth isn’t around to see you all ‘startled,’ you’d never hear the end of it.”

“Like you aren’t just as bad,” Fjord says, because he loves these people but they are all _assholes_ , every single one of them and it’s a miracle they haven’t given him any more of a complex over the years.

Beau snorts but doesn’t attempt to deny it.

“We have a job, if you aren’t too worried about being ‘startled,’ Captain,” she teases. He growls at her, a deep bass rumble of a noise that, even meant in play, sounds quite threatening. Beau just snickers at him before she continues talking. “The guards came by with a message from the Zolezzo captain and the marquis earlier," she says and that, or at least part of it, catches him off guard.

Fjord frowns. “The marquis?”

It wasn’t wholly unusual for the Zolezzo captain to hire them—usually slaying monsters she judged too near the city but too dangerous to have her men confront by themselves. The marquis, on the other hand, rarely involved himself with such matters. (Fjord considered that a good thing, since the Nine had never quite fixed the whole ‘fought with guards in the docks and stole a ship’ deal. The fewer authority figures that wanted to talk to them the better.)

Beau nods, not looking any happier about that than he is. “Apparently some drakes attacked a merchant caravan he’d been expecting from the Empire.” A hiss of air escapes his clenched teeth and she grimaces in agreement. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. It was a big caravan so some of them made it through once all the drakes were…,” her lips curl further down, searching for an appropriate word.

“Busy?” He suggests then winces because they were technically talking about people being eaten.

Beau snorts again, teetering her head from side to side. “Sure, busy. Why not. Once the drakes were all _busy_ some of them managed to escape with their hired guards, but they were too ‘ _startled_ ’—”

“Beau, I swear I fuck-”

She talks louder to compensate for his (attempted) interruption. “-to go back for their wagons. So we need to kill the drakes, bring back shit from the wagons if we can and then we get paid.”

_Paid_.

That was one of his favorite words.

“How much?”

“Seven thousand gold for killing the drakes, up to ten if we find the wagons or bring the stuff back ourselves. Orrr,” she drags the word out, cocking a brow at him, “if you talk them into it.”

Fjord doesn’t respond to the implication though, frowning because: “Seven thousand gold just for killing _drakes_?” 

That was...a _lot_ for drakes, certainly more than he would expect with how easy the damn things were to kill. Not that he remembers fighting them that well, considering that they’d only done so once, up in the northwestern bit of the Dunrocks during their sole, miserable trip through the Greying Wildlands. The dragon had certainly been more memorable than the drakes.

“How many of them are there?” He asks, and Beau’s expression goes serious, a frustrated edge hardening her mouth and eyes. “They confirmed that there were at least five, but the guards said they didn’t have more information than that,” she says, clearly suspicious.

“Well...that sounds like they’re probably not telling us something then.”

“Yeah.”

“So.” Fjord pauses, eyeing the way she turns to frown into the middle distance. “Are we doing it anyway?”

Little things like _bad decisions_ and _obvious traps_ and _oh Traveler look at all those teeth_ had never stopped them before, after all.

Beau huffs. “I mean, probably? Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m not thrilled about letting people get eaten on the roadside but also…,” she glances around to either side, leaning forward to whisper at him, “ _wedding money_.”

For the second time in ten minutes, Fjord’s mouth opens and words fail to emerge for a long, long moment.

Finally, he snorts.

Beau points sternly at him, unimpressed. “Don’t look at me like that! Houses are expensive and Jes is gonna want a really nice dress.” She says, stepping to the side and gesturing over her shoulder before he can respond. “Anyway, we’ve got some help if we need it.”

Fjord looks and—nearly jumps again at the unexpected presence of a man standing only a couple of feet away from him. Thankfully, Beau doesn’t seem to notice this time.

“This is Caleb,” she says, jerking her chin toward him. Fjord’s lost expression apparently doesn’t satisfy her because she scowls at him, her eyes darting intentionally from his and then down to the side several times. “Caleb _Widogast_ ,” she continues, with a subtle weight on the surname that he doesn’t understand until he follows her eyes down and- _ah._

There’s a pair of books hanging in holsters at the man’s sides. That, coupled with the addition of a last name, brings forth his memory of Beau’s warning from a few weeks ago, and the vague grumbling she’s done about the man since.

_The wizard_.

“Oh.”

The sound escapes him before he can even think to stop it. Beau frowns at him, shaking her head so slightly that he almost misses it. When Fjord just frowns back she makes a face at him, or tries to—there’s too many different parts for it to make any sort of sense, all flaring nostrils and weird eyebrow movements that he can’t make heads or tails of. Fjord shrugs at her and Beau scowls, like she’d really expected him to understand any of that.

Finally, he turns to look at the wizard, something charming and polite enough to soothe ruffled feathers ready on his lips, only to see a pair of blue eyes already looking back. “Would you two like to be left alone to confer further?” Widogast asks, glancing between he and Beau and then across the plaza to the Tidepeak, like he’s honestly considering walking away.

Beau says something back that he can’t focus on, the sound of it gruff but not mean.

Which is— _g_ _ood_ , because Fjord is a bit too preoccupied to smooth anything over right this second.

The accent had-

Surprised him, in a way.

He’d known the man was Zemnian—Beau had done enough impressions of various things the wizard had said that it would be hard for him to forget—but it’s...odd to hear one again. Widogast’s voice is soft and his accent lighter than he’s heard before but the sound of it still brings back memories Fjord would rather forget.

Rescuing Yeza had been worth it.

That didn’t mean it had been _easy_.

Fjord pushes the fuzzy memory of the world growing dark out of his mind and appraises the wizard as he and Beau squabble over the book Fjord had brought—which she’d apparently slipped out of his hands without him knowing.

Again.

The man is tall for a human, a strange mix of regal looking and poor. The drab coat and long, worn gloves don’t fit with the intricate braid in his coppery hair; the well-groomed short beard helps to hide the gauntness of his cheeks but it’s still apparent enough for even Fjord to see it. He looks a little more like a nobleman that had fallen on hard times than a wizard, but the holsters at his sides and the intelligence in his eyes as he looks at something in the book before handing it back to Beau are indications enough.

Beau squints at whatever they were looking at, frown tugging at the edge of her mouth, before she shrugs and closes the book. She looks up and inclines her head to the Tidepeak when she catches Fjord’s eyes. “Gonna go drop this off,” she says, wiggling the tome a little in her hand before she sprints off across the plaza without waiting for a response.

Fjord watches her go, a blue blur against the stone, before shaking his head and turning back to the wizard. Widogast lingers awkwardly in front of him, like he’s not sure whether he’s welcome or not without Beau there.

“Best not run off,” Fjord cautions him, “that’ll only make her chase you.”

Widogast nods. “I suspect I couldn’t outrun her anyway.”

The understatement makes Fjord snort.

“I suspect most _horses_ couldn’t beat her in a sprint,” he confirms and reaches out a hand to the man. “Fjord Lavorre,” he introduces, enjoying the little curl of warmth the addition of a last name gives him, even years on now. Widogast eyes him cautiously before taking it. His grip in Fjord’s is strong, all elegantly long fingers and strangely warm palms. Fjord wonders at how hot the man’s skin must be, for such heat to seep through his gloves.

“Caleb Widogast,” he responds, again in that soft, quiet way, like he’s afraid to draw attention to himself. “You may call me Caleb, if you like.”

Fjord nods and lets their hands drop.

“Likewise.”

And then, before awkward silence takes over the moment, Beau is back, glancing between them with narrowed eyes. “You get all the ‘you can call me Caleb, you can call me Fjord’ shit out of the way?”

He elbows her in the ribs. “It’s not shit, it’s _polite_.”

“It’s polite shit, then,” she retorts, elbowing him back. “Anyway, kill shit? Now?”

“We don’t even know if Caleb here _wants_ to come,” Fjord points out. Something odd happens on the wizard’s face, his eyes flickering over Fjord’s expression, to Beau and back. And Fjord might not be known for his introspection but even he can see the way the man relaxes at whatever he sees there.

That’s...interesting. Suspicious as hell but, considering that the guy looked like Jester could break him over her knee, Fjord would put up with it.

For now.

Widogast nods. “Wentworth informed me that half of your group lives elsewhere. If help would not be amiss then I’d be glad to tag along…?” He trails off, looking questioningly at them. The two members of the Nine exchange their own look and then, as one, shrug.

Fjord laughs waving a hand toward Beau for her to answer.

Her eyes narrow thoughtfully, scanning over the wizard as she mulls it over. Eventually: “Well, we don’t need all the wedding money _right now_ , I guess.” She cracks her knuckles, smiles a little in that crooked way, the one that makes Fjord remember her ripping the heart out of some miscellaneous demon. (At least, the way she’d smiled before her brain caught up with her hands and she’d immediately dropped it to the ground, gagging.)

“Alright—we’ll pick up Jester, you can put your armor on and _then_ , we’re ready to kill shit.”

  


 

* * *

(- **A name, freely given** :

Fjord curses, squinting into one of his saddlebags. Nott had given him a handful of her buttons a few days ago, when a close encounter with a rock wall had broken enough off of his coat that it needed new ones sewn on. (“These are my _least_ favorites,” she’d said with suspicious, narrowed eyes. “But you’re still going to give back the ones you don’t use.” It wasn’t a question.)

And he’d sewn on a few of them and he wasn’t freezing because of it and that was great and all but Nott wanted them back _yesterday_ and he can’t find the rest of the fucking buttons—

“Fjord?”

He jumps, a hand twisting to summon his falchion but it’s only Jester. A bit solemn-faced and singed from their last fight but undeniably not another mutated demon bear, or whatever the hell Beau had said those were.

“Yeah Jes?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Jester walks a bit closer, and looks at the ground when she stops, glancing up at him. She twists the toe of her boot in the dirt, unusually demure. Fjord removes his hands from the saddlebag, sensing a heavier subject than he’d first suspected. “Sure, whatcha need?”

“Wellll…,” she drags out the word, eyes flickering back and away. His back straightens up. Jester hasn’t been this nervous around him in a long time. “Do you ever get lonely?” She blurts out, something painfully honest and concerned taking over her face.

“Um.” Fjord clears his throat, curious about where _that_ had come from. “Well, I suppose so? I’d say that everyone does, from time to time—”

“No no no,” Jester cuts him off, looking dissatisfied. She chews at her lip. “I mean...because you don’t know where you came from? You don’t have a family?” He freezes, though Jester doesn’t seem to notice, words rushing out of her like the flooded river they crossed earlier that day.

“I just—I have my Mama, you know? And I don’t use her name a lot because people aren’t really supposed to know about me but it’s _ours_ and I know that she’s mine and I’m hers. And that’s what matters, knowing that there is someone you _belong_ with, people who are _yours_.”

Fjord swallows, throat clicking loudly.

“S-sure, it does.”

He doesn’t know, actually, has never really had the chance because he wasn’t sure about Vandran for so long and then, eventually, he _was_ and then the man was gone and—

He doesn’t know, but belonging somewhere sounds nice. Sounds like what he used to think about in the orphanage, all those long nights and longer days.

Jester frowns at him.

She probably knows what he’s thinking, because no matter her little mistakes or misunderstandings there are times when her eyes feel like they’re looking _through_ his skin, finding all the soft bits of him that he’s spent his life curled around and guarding. She doesn’t mean it badly though, never hurts him with what she knows and she proves it (again and again and again) because she reaches out, a cool hand settling on his forearm.

“I’m sorry Fjord, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He opens his mouth, tries to protest or reassure or deflect—but she just _looks_ at him and his jaw snaps shut. Caduceus might be the wise one but he’s not _completely_ without survival instincts. “I only wanted to know because, well, you have one name, right?”

He nods, not quite sure if his voice would work if he tried to speak. Thankfully that’s enough of an answer for Jester because she starts talking again, that nervous, high-speed babble she gets into sometimes when she wants to say something but she isn’t sure quite _what_.

“Well, I know Nott likes to joke about your name being Tough—though that would be really cool and if you want to be named that you totally should Fjord because that would be great, that would be wonderful—”

“Jester.”

She stops and sighs, shaking her head. “Okay so—I know that you still don’t know my Mama very well, but she is very wonderful Fjord and I asked her and she said I could so... I wanted to tell you that if you ever feel too lonely, then you are always welcome to be a Lavorre.”

“Oh.” Fjord manages to get out and then, after a few seconds of silence, “Jester, I...”

“You don’t _have to_ ,” she amends, though the lack of immediate rejection seems to steady her some because she says, “But you are my very, very good friend and I think that you would be a very, very good brother, if you wanted.”

Part of Fjord wants to track down the Gentleman to whatever hole he’s crawled into, wants to rip him from the ground and make him bleed like any living thing does because Jester’s love was worth _so, so_ much more than anyone could ever deserve. The rest is preoccupied with the burn in his eyes and the shine he can see in hers.

“I’d love to accept, Jes, but I do have a question, if you don’t mind?”

She wipes at the corners of her eyes, sniffling a little. “Yes?”

“Shouldn’t you be asking Beau this kind of thing? What if she gets jealous when I take your name before she does?”

Jester snorts and then giggles, shaking her head and clapping a hand over her mouth. Her cheeks puff up with suppressed laughter before it finally breaks free, loud and bright in the dim, cloudy night.

She punches him once she has her breath back. It’s gentle for Jester, which means that it still hurts like hell. The bruise lasts for two weeks.

And every time Fjord looks at it?

He smiles.)

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got longer than I'd planned cause at least one person caught Beau referring to Fjord as her brother-in-law and I, weakling that I am, couldn't resist the urge to drop both of these Fjord & Jester bonding notes in here. Whoops?
> 
> I like the way the notes turned out, though despite much editing and chopping this chapter feels Dense in a weird way that I'm not into so I'll come back for later poking at some point. Still, we made it to the first Widofjord meeting! Bit low key as they're both suspicious bastards and need time, but Fjord will get the chance to be impressed with Caleb next chapter!
> 
> Oh, also I changed the note dividers to the horizontal lines cause I remembered that was a thing. Not sure how much I like it but it's better for the long notes than block quotes cause boy does that indentation line get ugly after a while.


	4. Chapter 4

There were things Fjord missed about traveling almost all the time—all the exciting new sights and experiences, the opportunities to meet interesting people (the ones that _weren’t_ trying to kill them, at least). Something about waking up and not knowing exactly where you’d be at the end of the day had always thrilled him, ever since the first time he left Port Damali. One of the things he hadn’t missed about traveling was the monotony of the actual travel part of traveling.

And he loves Jester, he does, but she is _not_ helping.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Green.”

“What’s your favorite animal?”

“Cats.”

Jester huffs, cheeks puffing out in a long gust of air at yet another curt answer. “Well what do you like to _dooo_ then, Caleb?”

“Read,” Widogast responds, fast as anything.

For the first time in ten minutes of persistent questioning, Jester pauses. Fjord shifts in his saddle, turning to see her tapping a finger to her lips, obviously deep in thought as she contemplates her next questions. Beau catches his eyes as he turns back and shrugs at him. _I just love her_ , the monk’s expression says. _That doesn’t mean I understand_ _where half the stuff she says comes from_ _._

“Okay wait!” Jester bursts out. “I have a good one: Caleb, if you could, like, do anything in the world—like be a king or own a sky ship or grow cake out of your hands, what would you dooo?” The charms on her horns jingle and Fjord knows without looking that she’s bouncing in her saddle. It’s a familiar noise.

Widogast pauses for slightly longer than he had for any of the other questions.

“...read.”

Jester groans loudly, unimpressed, and Beau huffs, mouth opening to say something Fjord will almost certainly regret. He leans as far off the side of his horse as he dares, swatting her lightly on the arm. “ _No_.” Her mouth snaps shut and, eyes glittering with familiar mischief, she scowls at him.

“I wasn’t gonna say anything!”

“Yes, you were.”

Beau smirks. “Okay, yeah, maybe I was. Still, it wasn’t gonna be _that_ bad.”

“Sure,” Fjord agrees though he _highly_ doubts that. “But, I had a thought: how about we _don’t_ annoy a mysterious magical person for once?” Beau cocks an eyebrow at him, expression making it quite clear how likely she thinks that is to happen.

Privately, Fjord agrees with that too.

The Nine have a... _history_ after all.

“Please?” He asks anyway.

She hums in a tone that suggests consideration but he can clearly see means jack shit.

“Maybe.”

Behind them, Jester is too busy expressing her disappointment in the wizard’s lackluster answer to have noticed their bickering. “Really, Caleb? Read?”

“Yes. I like books.”

“Don’t you like other things too though?” She coaxes. “Like, I like the Traveler and painting and my Mama and Fjord, plus doughnuts and cupcakes and bear claws _and_ cake. And Beau!” She leans in toward him a little, mock whispering. “I _reallyyy_ like Beau, she’s my favorite.”

Fjord glances over at Beau, whose cheeks flush at that declaration. It makes her attempt at scowling at him for seeing her in such a state much less effective and, happy as he is about her happiness, he doesn’t even mock her for it.

“...I like cats,” Widogast repeats. “I like cats and books both very much.”

Despite the lack of new information Jester takes the repeated answer well. “I _do_ like cats,” she muses. “Even though Nugget is definitely better than any cat in the world.” Widogast makes an indignant noise, which might’ve been a decent conversation starter if Jester hadn’t already found what she wanted to talk about:

“So, if you really like books that much then have you read _Tusk Love_?”

Fjord chokes, never quite prepared for the way she brings up her favorite novel whenever she pleased; no matter that talking about a cliché romance novel—a good chunk of which was soppy, badly written soft-core porn—was probably _not_ the right approach to take with the reserved, awkward wizard.

Regardless, her eyebrow wiggling over the title is practically audible. Beau makes a rough, throaty noise that, after a few seconds, stumbles its way into being a snicker.

“...no.” Widogast sounds confused.

There’s an awkwardly long pause and then he adds, just quiet enough that Fjord barely hears it over his own impending doom, “I enjoy many kinds of books, but my studies have focused mostly on arcane and academic texts, as well as history.”

“Awww, you should read it! It’s so good and Oskar is so dreamy!” Jester swoons.

Fjord pounds at his chest, struggling his way back into breathing properly. He’s just managed to drag a shaky breath in when, for the first time since they left the city, Widogast volunteers his own question:

“Oskar? He is in this book?”

Jester damn near _squeaks_. “Oh my—Caleb! You _have_ to read it okay, I’ll even let you borrow my copy! It’s like the _best_ book I’ve ever read and I have read _so many books_ , okay, you—”

“Okay!” Beau interrupts with a loud clap, sharp enough that she makes herself wince. “Okay—not that I don’t wanna hear you tell my emotionally stunted co-worker all about sappy porn Jes, because I _really, really fucking do_ , but it looks like we’re here.”

And so they are.

In short order three members of the Nine and their tag-along slow their horses and ease them over to the far side of the road, a few dozen feet back from the distant shadows of wreckage at the roadside. From their position Fjord can see several carts still on the road, only one of them likely to move again without extensive repairs. The others look to have been driven off the road during the attack, barreling down off the relatively steep slope. At speed too, judging by the long ruts torn into the tall plain grass behind them.

Jester sniffs at the air once they’re off their horses and closer to the carts, her face scrunching up at the smell. “Ugh, _blood_.”

Fjord decides not to breathe in through his nose unnecessarily while they’re here. Beau, on the other hand, takes a deep breath of her own and immediately grimaces. “Yup, this is the place.”

By silent agreement—and the fact that they’re more familiar with casing disasters than most people really need to be—they split up. Beau climbs in the massive hole in the side of the first cart, while Jester pokes through the bags spilled out at its side to see if there’s anything interesting in _with_ the goods the caravan had on hand. The Nine were damn familiar with coincidences after all, and it would be completely unsurprising if the caravan turned out to be smugglers.

Fjord, hobbling a little awkwardly after the ride, trails Widogast to the second cart.

Widogast gets immediately distracted by the side of the cart, running his hands over the places where claws had drug along the wood but not gone deep enough to destroy it entirely. Fjord leaves him to it and breaks off, following the stench of blood around the cart to where the front had fallen, turned directly away from the road.

He stops short as he turns the corner, nearly stepping into the mess of what had once been a pair of cart horses. There’s not much left of what he assumes had been a large piebald, even less of its dark bay yoke mate. Someone hums just over his shoulder and he glances back to see Widogast there, staring curiously at the corpses.

“Something wrong?” Fjord shifts a little out of the way, letting the wizard step in closer to the horses. Widogast’s brow furrows and he frowns at the bodies.

“I do not know yet. The claw marks are...odd. They could be draconic, yes, but they’re too large for a normal drake.”

That pronouncement makes Fjord’s stomach sink.

“An actual dragon then?” He asks, looking up and searching the skies before he even finishes the question.

The morning’s rain clouds had cleared off, looming as a far off shadow on the horizon. The empty blue left behind in their place, however, suddenly looks more ominous than it had a minute ago.

Widogast shakes his head. “No, they’re too small for anything but a young dragon, certainly. Still, there’s something...” His voice trails off and he leans closer to the bodies, staring at the bite marks. Fjord doubts that it’ll do him much good—the drakes, or whatever they might be, had been hungry enough that the horses are more bite mark than not.

Widogast backs away from the horses after only a short time, seemingly in agreement. He shakes his head again. “These are not from normal drakes,” he says, sounding both certain of his pronouncement and unsatisfied with the truth.

Fjord—who’d always been a bit more concerned about being bitten than what, precisely, was doing the biting—shrugs. “Most things we end up involved in aren’t normal,” he offers, moving back to examining the cart and its surroundings. “You get used to it.”

“That does fit with what I’ve heard of your group, yes.” Something about the wizard’s tone makes Fjord look back, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh? What have you heard?”

The Nine weren’t _famous_ per se, at least on a large scale, but there were stories about them if you knew the right places to look. Sometimes under different names and faces but, if one had a particular mind for details, they could be pieced together. Widogast certainly seemed the type. Besides which, with the man working in both the Observatory and the Tidepeak he was bound to have heard _something_ about them. The Cobalt Soul knew more about them than most, Yussah even more than that.

Widogast hums. “...Enough. I’ve heard enough.”

Fjord frowns.

That was, perhaps, the most suspicious way the wizard could have answered his question.

For principle’s sake he keeps a closer eye on Widogast as they finish with the cart and head to another. The man doesn’t act any differently though, and either doesn't notice the surge in Fjord’s increased attention or doesn't care.

Searching the carts turns up nothing of note—just more dead horses and ruined supplies.

That is, until the fifth.

He and Widogast have just finished slogging down the muddy slope, several minutes after the girls had already done so, when Jester yells from the other side of one of the crashed carts. “Hey! I found blood!”

There’s a shifting _groan_ of wood and then the entire cart tilts thirty degrees or so to the side.

Something in the mess crunches as it settles into its new position. Jester’s voice sounds again, slightly breathless. “Oh man, like, a _lot_ of blood guys, it’s pretty gross.”

Fjord’s nose scrunches up.

There was no need for her to sound so _happy_ about it.

Beau snickers at the look on his face as she passes him (she knows damn well how he feels about Jester giggling over dead bodies), just ahead of Widogast.

He waits a beat, two, and then flanks the wizard.

And that’s when Fjord’s weight, slight though he might be for a half-orc, stresses the rain soaked earth just that little bit more than the rangy monk or half-starved wizard had. The ground dips and caves under his feet, sending him crashing face first into the muck near the cart. The muck that...smells vaguely metallic. _Oh Wildmother_ , Fjord curses, pushing himself free of the mess of mud, blood and other things he didn’t want to know about.

He wipes at his eyes, scraping gunk off on the edge of his vambrace. “Beau, gimme a hand?”

There’s no response.

He sighs. “Jester?”

Still nothing.

And then Beau’s voice, uncharacteristically soft. “Oh _fuck_.”

That’s when he hears it, the sound distant at first but growing louder. A screeching roar, pitch somehow both deep and high and all the more unpleasant for it. Several others call out in response.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” he echoes, directly into the mud.

He might be the charismatic one, but there were some things Beau definitely said best.

Fjord heaves himself up from the ground and rounds the carriage, flicking his wrist to summon his sword as he catches sight of the not-drakes, landing fifty or so feet away.

Jester’s hands flash with pink sparkles, her spiritual weapon flickering into life before her as she draws her axe. Beau knocks her fists together and they begin to crackle with snaking bolts of lighting, intermingled with ink black lines of shifting ruins. She looks over her shoulder at him and grins, all white teeth and the desire to punch something until it broke.

“Oh fuck _yes_.”

 

  
  


For as many fights as he’d been in over the last few years, Fjord had thought that, at some point, the rush of battle would become easier to process. And, over the course of bandits, trolls, giants, dragons, that one roc and so many other things he couldn’t remember—he’d been proven right.

Sort of.

It was easy enough to think during a fight, to take in all the things happening at once and figure out where he should go and what he should do. Afterwards, when trying to think back through battles, the details were blurrier; a flood of information that was not only hard to organize in his own mind but damn near impossible to break down and take note of the way Beau liked to.

Usually, it was annoying and made him feel a bit useless whenever Caduceus or Jester or even _Nott_ pointed out something strange and important about whatever they’d just fought.

His back slams into the ground, air forcing its way of his lungs as he slides, bleeding and bruised, back from the drake. The force is such that it sends him careening, body tilting to the side as he loses any semblance of balance and his legs tip up over his head.

 _This_ was the kind of thing he’d be glad to forget, however.

Fjord pushes his face up from the mud once more, rolling just in time to avoid one of the large, paddle like feet of one of the creatures, using his momentum to stumble back up to his feet.

‘Sea drakes,’ as Widogast had yelled they were called, shortly after the attack started, were roughly the size of a young dragon, with short, wide legs, a well-muscled tail half again as long as the rest of their body and disproportionately large heads.

They were also _fucking assholes_.

He mutters a quick prayer and light spreads down Star Razor’s blade as he slices the drake across the face. The sword leaves a brilliant golden glow in its trail, blood dribbling down from where metal had bisected the creature’s eye and split its scales down to slicing off a chunk of what passed for its lips. The drake screeches, pained and furious, head darting forward with surprising speed, its large maw closing down around his arm before he gets the chance to move.

Fjord winces, expecting a quick, terrible surge of pain at the loss of the limb.

Somehow, what happens instead is worse.

The drake rears back onto its hind legs and _pushes_ , the strong muscle launching it up from the ground with surprising ease for such a squat beast. Close as he is, the beat of its wings is painfully loud in Fjord’s ears, outweighing even his own thundering heartbeat. The sight of the ground falling away from his feet as the drake drags him along with it into the air is more painful still.

He dismisses Star Razor and grasps at its face with his free hand, searching for purchase on its snout and finding nothing, as the loose, bloody flap of its lip renders the rest of its nearby spikes and scales too slick to grab. Through the hole in its flesh he can only just see his forearm wedged between its large teeth, stuck fast by fortune and misfortune in equal measure.

Fjord throws a quick glance down at the ground—sees Beau fighting a second drake, the chest burst out of her first opponent; Jester’s drake flagging, half-rotted and horrible as it snaps at her duplicate; and Widogast’s already dead and burning painfully bright, arcane fire flickering red and iridescent over its body. Though stomach turning and grim, it’s also unbelievably _pretty_.

The part of Fjord that still thinks magic is the coolest thing in the world wants nothing more than to stare at it. The rest of him is more concerned with how far he’s getting from the ground.

He catches sight of the wizard then, standing not that far from the burning corpse. The human, to his surprise, is staring right back at Fjord, something small and golden held aloft in his hand. As Fjord and the drake continue to rise the end of it begins to cloud with a miasmatic fog of deep purple energy. Despite the distance between them, he hears the wizard’s voice cry out, clear as day.

“Nein!”

Immediately, two things happen.

First, the drake’s jaw goes limp along with the rest of its body. Without the added muscle tension keeping his limb wedged, Fjord easily pulls his arm up and out of the gap in its teeth. Secondly, without the drake’s beating wings to keep them aloft, he begins to _fall_.

The force of the air whipping into his face as he plummets steals Fjord’s scream away, even as the ground looms closer and closer with every agonizingly long second that he falls and then—

He is weightless, the odd but familiar sensation of featherfall overtaking his body and slowing his descent.

The drake’s corpse is not as fortunate.

Fjord turns his head away as it nears the ground, looking to where Beau and Jester have finished off their own drakes and noticed his lackadaisical descent from the sky. Jester waves. He starts to return the gesture but the sudden wet thud of the drake’s body impacting behind him distracts him for a few seconds and then he’s too low to see her over the corpse she’s standing behind.

His feet hit the mud with an unpleasant squelch.

It’s leagues better than _being_ an unpleasant squelch though, so he can’t complain.

He stands there for a moment, listless, before he glances down at his armor. This morning it had been perfectly clean where it hung on its rack. Now, it’s a mess of dirt, mud, blood in various stages of drying and other grime whose sources he’d prefer not to think about.

Fjord shivers a little, arms twitching with leftover adrenaline, itching with the urge to _do_ something. Despite—or perhaps because of—the now slowing thundering of his heart, he grins.

Oh fuck _yes_ , indeed.

Footsteps approach from behind him. Fjord twists, turning entirely when he sees Widogast standing there, more relaxed than he’s ever seen the man, the golden object still held in his hand. This close it’s obviously a wand, the end of it twined round by raised ridges of ivory, coming to a point in a blunt, three-headed statue. It disappears up Widogast’s sleeve before he can get a better look at it.

If he wasn’t still pulsing with the high of a successful battle, Fjord might’ve thought to question him on what it was. As it is, “What the fuck was _that_?” He asks, breathless and grinning.

Widogast’s shoulders hunch up, loose posture tensing up at the question. “It is nothing, just a spell-”

Fjord shakes his head, carding his cleaner hand through his hair. The wizard is obviously flustered but he can’t help but press a little more. “ _Just_ a spell? That’s not _just_ anything—you yelled at it and it died!”

“Oh, ah, well the spell is—you imbue power into whatever one word you choose, rather than a specific verbal word or phrase like most spells. It is...” He pauses, searching for words.

“Badass?” Fjord suggests _,_ grinning even wider. They really should’ve hung around more wizards that weren’t trying to kill them.

Widogast actually laughs at that, or at least snorts a little and exhales faster. Which, judging by the man’s generally grim attitude so far, is close enough to count, he figures. “No, no—the spell is a battle too, in a way. The creature must fight back against my will and the power of my spell. If it is weak enough, then it loses.”

“And it just dies?”

Widogast leans down, tucking his chin in toward his chest. It’s hard to see at this angle but Fjord is sure there’s a bit of flush to his cheeks. “Ja.”

“You’re trying to tell me that that _isn’t_ impressive?” He’s seen Jester and Caduceus pull off fantastic, literally  _miraculous_ spells over the years and he's even done so himself but-. There's a particular _something_ to Widogast's magic that stands out to him, for the sheer virtue that it is his own and no one else's, that it was earned rather than given.

For all that Fjord has come to appreciate and respect the Wild Mother over the past few years, the desire for such self-reliance speaks to a deeper part of himself than he can articulate.

“Boys, boys—you’re both pretty,” Beau calls as she trots over, distracting him from his moment of contemplation. He can see Jester a ways back behind her, walking slower and occasionally checking various parts of the sea drakes’ corpses. He looks away when she starts prying teeth out of one.

“I’m handsome,” he corrects, focusing back in on Beau. “Rugged, manly. _Strapping_ , some might say.” He’d buff his claws against his shirt but his armor is in the way and, anyway, Beau’s expression is already painfully dry. “Hey, it’s true! Jester,” he calls out over Beau’s shoulder, looking for support. “I’m handsome aren’t I?”

Jester’s head pops up from the other side of one of the larger carcasses.

“What?” She cups a hand to her ear. Even from this distance he can see a dark, unpleasantly thick fluid dripping down her wrist onto her sleeve. There’s some of it in her hair.

He gulps. The joke is not worth this.

“Nevermind Jessie!”

She ducks back behind the corpse. Beau laughs at his unnerved expression—there was something about Jester cheerfully dismantling bodies that he’d never quite managed to get used to—before turning back to the bashful looking wizard. “Seriously though Widogast, what’d you do to that drake? It sounded like you counted it to death.”

Fjord turns, curious as well. “Yeah, why’d you yell ‘nine’ at it? Even we’ve never done that.” That was really saying something too, considering some of the shit that had come out of Nott’s mouth. Beau winces, probably remembering one of her especially... _creative_ one-liners.

Widogast looks between them with a furrowed brow. “What do you-ah, I see. Not nine, _n_ _ein_.” He emphasizes the word when he says it the second time though, to Fjord’s ears, it sounds exactly the same.

Beau’s quirked brow seems to agree.

Widogast shakes his head at their continued confusion. “It is Zemnian,” he explains, “N-E-I-N. It means ‘no.’”

Fjord hums in acknowledgment and shifts to look back at Jester, finished with the corpses and making her way over to them. Beau, however, isn’t yet done with the conversation. “Wait, you mean that in Zemnian we would literally be ‘the mighty no?’ That’s—that’s great.” She nudges at his arm. “Can we change our name, Captain? That would be fucking cool.”

“We’re _retired_ ,” he protests.

Beau squints at him and then makes a show of looking around at the battlefield they’re standing amid—the mangled carts and trampled grass, the bodies of the drakes oozing thick blood into puddles on the ground, distorted by rot and puncture wounds. Several of them are still burning, crackling with both fire and eldritch energy. “Is this what retirement is?” She sounds doubtful. “I thought there would be more Bingo and less killing shit.”

“Mostly retired,” Fjord amends. “Between forty and sixty percent retired, depending on the day.”

Beau visibly considers that, leaning her hand side to side. “I guess.”

Jester, still smeared with blood and small bits of viscera, arrives at their group with a yawn, leaning up against Beau’s side. “What’s Bingo?” She asks through another jaw cracking yawn. “Is it food?”

Beau pauses in the middle of wrapping her arm around her shoulders, looking mildly perturbed by the question. “Wait—what’s Bingo? You don’t know Bingo?” When Jester shakes her head she glances back over at Fjord. “Do _you_ know Bingo?” She asks, tone rendering it less of a question and more of an accusation.

He shakes his head.

Beau frowns. “Huh, guess it’s an Empire thing. Widogast, do you know about-”

The wizard interrupts, clearing his throat.

“Expositor Beauregard, I believe it is time we had our conversation.”

She freezes, arm tensing around Jester’s shoulders before it slowly retracts. Fjord glances between her face—earlier ease completely absent—and the wariness that has overtaken Jester’s expression. He shifts himself, ready to call for his own sword should the need arise.

Ignorant or apathetic to the shift in his audience’s attitude, Widogast reaches up toward his neck and starts to pull a chain out from under his shirt. He pauses. “And yes, I know of Bingo.”

The word sounds even sillier in his accent and grave tone, so much so that they all stand still, befuddled, long enough for the wizard to fish a necklace out from under his shirt. The chain is bright and silver and Widogast grabs it halfway down its length, cupping the other hand underneath the pendant.

He raises it toward them, opening his mouth and, at the same time, Fjord summons the Star Razor. “You might want to explain what you’re doing before you go pulling anything else out, friend,” he cautions. The moment hangs between them, charged with tension before—Jester snickers.

“Yeah, _Caleb_ ,” she teases. “Watch what you’re pulling out of there.”

Fjord runs back through what he’d just said and closes his eyes. He sighs. “Jester could you please hold off on the dick jokes for just a few minutes? Perhaps until we know whether or not we have to fight _Caleb_ here.”

“Alright, Fjord,” she agrees with visible reluctance, even as she grabs at her symbol of the Traveler.

Widogast remains surprisingly unfazed by the tangent. “I’m not going to attack you." He seems at once both un-bothered and unimpressed with their ready stances.

Which, Fjord supposes, is fair.

The man had saved him a great deal of pain from that fall, for all that it probably wouldn’t have killed him and if he did intend them harm it would've been easier to turn on them in the middle of the fight than just after it. Still, this was the sort of situation where caution was better than carelessness.

Beau snorts. “Yeah, because we totally trust you to keep your word. Out here. Alone and away from the city.”

One eyebrow climbs up Widogast’s forehead. “You outnumber me, you agreed to talk with me and it was _your_ idea to invite me out of the city, alone, to fight hostile monsters,” he states. "If anything I should be the one suspicious of _your_ turning on me so quickly."

From anyone else it would’ve been a taunt. Widogast’s monotone renders it nothing more than a statement of fact. Beau’s shoulders tense up further anyway, now a combination of paranoia and defensiveness.

Jester cuts in before the monk can snap back at him, which Fjord is more than a little grateful for. He doesn’t doubt their odds against the man but he’s not exactly _eager_ to fight someone he just watched scold a drake to death.

“Well yeah, but _we’re_ not suspicious of _us_ , are we?” She quips, tone not exactly friendly but a damn sight nearer than Beau’s. “That’d be stupid, Caleb.”

Widogast stares at her, face unreadable. “I...suppose.” After his Jester-induced surprise wears off he frowns again. “Regardless of suspicion, it would be foolish to fight any of you three, especially when you are together.” He shakes his head. “Especially when I don’t want to fight you at all.”

“We might be more inclined to believe that if you’d explain what you want with Beau,” Fjord breaks in with the sort of companionable hardness he often used to threaten guards without _threatening_ guards. Widogast stares blankly at him. He nods his chin toward the necklace. “Telling us what that is would be a good place to start.”

“Ah this is-oh this is not a weapon.” Widogast lifts it up a little higher, showing off the wide bronze pedant hanging at the bottom. It’s in the shape of an eye but a closed one, with another symbol resting just over it, both enclosed within the lighter colored frame of the pendant. “This amulet prevents me from being scryed upon, as well as other forms of arcane tracking.” Jester leans in to look at it a little closer, tilting her head side to side like she’s appraising it.

Eventually she leans back and nods. “That makes sense, it _is_ a closed eye. Be weird if it did something else, like make fire balls or let you breathe underwater,” she says matter-of-factly. Unused to Jester’s way of thinking, Widogast looks rather thrown. “That wouldn’t make any sense, Caleb.”

“That is...true, yes.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Beau cuts in, voice hard. “And why do you have it? You’ve never worn it to the Observatory before, we would’ve found it on you.”

Fjord elbows her in the side gently in the side. “Beau, cool it down a little,” he hisses under his breath.

She scowls at him. “He’s the one pulling out magical items on us,” she points out, “He could be lying about what that is and be about to set us all on fire or some shit.” Widogast shifts in the corner of Fjord’s vision, a short, aborted movement that might’ve been a flinch. Beside him, Beau relaxes some, turning back to Widogast with a mildly less antagonistic expression.

“No offense, dude. You’re just being really fucking suspicious about this.”

“None taken.” The wizard’s bland expression doesn’t change at all. “I do not care how you talk to me.” Beau stiffens, like now _she’s_ thinking of being offended. Before Fjord can elbow her again— _what happened to not irritating magical people for once?—_ Widogast’s hand comes up, reaching slowly for Star Razor’s blade. He pulls it up to rest against the side of his neck, shivering once the frigid chill of the blade touches his uncovered skin. Fjord tries to draw the sword back but the wizard keeps hold of it and, if anything, presses it closer to himself.

“Here. Does this suffice as a gesture of trust for the moment?” He asks Beau, completely ignoring Fjord even as the blade cuts very slightly into the side of his neck. The warmth of his blood touching it makes it hiss and steam. “Will you listen to me now?”

Fjord can’t look away from the thin slice in the man’s throat but Beau must nod as satisfaction spreads over Widogast’s face. “Good, thank you. You have not seen the amulet before because I do not wear it to the Observatory. There are some people I wish to find who have the same amulet and, since I cannot find them, I leave it off at times in hopes that they will find me instead.”

“People you want to find—is that what you wanted to meet with me about?” Beau huffs when he and Jester look sharply at her. “Look, it’s nothing, alright? He told me the other day that he wanted to talk outside the city, so when the guards came in talking about the drakes...” She shrugs, faux-casually. “He was already there and he can fight, we can fight, there’s something to be fought—good an excuse as any, right?”

“ _Right_ ,” Jester says, lowly and with a stern, narrow-eyed look at her fiance. Fjord is struck by a wave of relief that she’s not looking at _him_ like that.

Mad Jester was...not fun.

“Except if Fjord hadn’t been there today you would’ve gone alone and if Caleb wanted to lure you out of the city to torture and interrogate you, or kidnap you then Fjord and I would have no idea where you were and I’d have to call Veth and then we’d track you down and _kill him_ and it wouldn’t even matter because you could have been _dead_ and we’d have no idea where your body was.” She smiles brightly then, because Jester is _terrifying_ when she wants to be and not enough people remember that. “Other than that? Great idea!”

Beau stares at her, jaw dropped open. She reels it slowly back in, still staring. Fjord—who really doesn’t need to see his best friend’s ‘ _fuck that’s hot_ ’ face again, especially when it’s directed at his _sister—_ coughs, looking back over to Widogast, who’s still holding the blade of his sword to his throat.

“You wanted to talk to Beau?” He asks, loudly.

Widogast, looking vaguely mystified by the three of them, stares at him for a moment. “Ah, yes, she—as an Expositor of the Cobalt Soul, I had hoped Beauregard may have information about the people I seek, or be able to get it.”

“And why would she help you?” Fjord can’t help but ask.

The Nine, for all the good they’d ended up doing along the way, weren’t known for their sense of generosity, even within the circles that _did_ know of them.

“Why indeed.” The question seems to amuse the wizard, his lips quirking up into an expression so rueful it’s more grimace than smile. “The most I can offer are my services, such as they are,” Widogast shrugs, uncaring of the way the motion causes Star Razor to cut deeper into his neck. “If she did not take such a favor then I thought to negotiate a price for any information she might be able to give me, or perhaps appeal to her curiosity if nothing else.”

 _That_ sounded much more like their kind of thing—money.

Money and the pure, unadulterated need to get into other people’s business.

“Well, we’re already out here and covered in blood,” Beau breaks back into the conversation. She stares at Widogast intently for a long moment, throwing a few glances at Fjord as she does so, visibly mulling over something. “And you did help us,” she says, looking pained by the admission. “So what did you want to know?”

Widogast lets go of the sword—and Fjord draws the blade away at once, dismissing it. He watches as the man’s posture evens out, straightening up from a slump he hadn’t even noticed he stood in. It brings the top of his coppery head up to even with Fjord’s jaw, an offhand observation he’s immediately distracted from by the wizard’s next words, filled as they are with intent and importance.

“What do you know of Trent Ikithon?”

Beau frowns, her eyes narrowing. He can’t tell whether it’s in suspicion or consideration but, knowing Beau, ‘both’ was the likeliest answer.

“That’s...he was one of the old guys with the Cerberus Assembly, right? I think we met him once.” She glances at him searchingly but Fjord just shakes his head.

He has absolutely no idea who that is.

“Oh!” Jester, who’d been squinting thoughtfully herself, perks up and snaps her fingers. “He was that guy—that one guy at the Victory Pit party!” She swats lightly at Beau’s arm. “You and Yasha talked to him remember? And she told him she was from Xhorhas and we were all ‘oh that is not good at all’ but then all that stuff with the tower and the guy happened and we got the do...” She, thankfully, cuts herself off before she gets any further through that sentence.

“The thingy,” she says instead. Despite himself, Fjord snorts. The mystical piece of the Kryn Dynasty’s god (or whatever it was; they’d never gotten a clear explanation) that they used to carry around in her backpack.

 _The thingy_.

Also thankfully, Widogast appears to have either not caught her slip up or not be interested in its cause. His eyes brighten, feverishly blue, as he looks over their faces. “You’ve met him then?”

Beau steps forward and crosses her arms over her chest, widening her stance a little and becoming a veritable wall of stubbornness. “Yeah, I guess so. What about him?”

“When was this?”

“Three years ago, I think? Almost four now, I guess.”

The anticipation that had overtaken the wizard bleeds out all at once, his shoulders hunching as if under physical pressure. “And you’ve heard nothing else of him?” He presses, voice tired and urgent at once. Fjord glances over at Beau, watching her bristle. “No reports of his activity since the dissolution of the Assembly? _Nothing_?”

“Nothing,” Beau grits out, visibly annoyed by persistent questioning and lack of answers in turn. “Look man-”

Widogast does not.

In both the bravest and stupidest thing Fjord has seen the man do, he ignores Beau completely, reaching up to grab his hair with both hands. He directs his next question to his boots, though it freezes the Nine in place all the same.

“So you cannot tell me where he is—or even if he’s alive?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- me, writing Beau being justifiably suspicious of Caleb wanting to talk with her about something away from the city: what would Caleb ‘power move’ Widogast do to earn someone’s tentative trust quickly? Ah yes, threaten his own life, duh. ~~also I couldn't resist Caleb somehow still managing to get Fjord to hold a sword to his neck, even a universe and 4ish years away from where it would've first happened~~  
> 

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? Also, feel free to let me know if you spot any typos, this is unbeta-ed so help is definitely welcome!  
> Writing tumblr: [fiction-over-facts](https://fiction-over-facts.tumblr.com/)  
> Main/cr tumblr: [irregulargnoll](https://irregulargnoll.tumblr.com/)


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